Evans: Crisis in Ukraine -- It's not about us

I have a Swedish friend who lives in the United States and has been listening to the endless carping, point-scoring and other yabbling about the troubling situation in Ukraine and she has a message for America: It isn't about us.

"If you want to understand Ukraine and Russia's current interests, ignore the bulk of all the platform talk in the U.S., as well as the many articles written and just research Russia's reliance on gas export to Europe (and other parts of the world,)" she said recently. "It has of course nothing to do with the current administration in the U.S. Sometimes the self-centered narcissism of this country gets pretty tiring. Not everything has a direct link to the USA."

I consider her views more valid than those of most Americans, fed as we are on the airy cotton-candy of simple-minded U.S.-centric media. After all, Ukraine is in her neighborhood, if not quite her backyard.

"Avoid any blogs or articles that focus on the (bleep) stance of the Americans," she said when I asked where I might go for less parochial coverage. "Focus on ... texts mapping out the Russian and World Bank in Crimean history and then on the economic situation between these countries (and minorities within, such as Ukraine's dependency on Russian money not to collapse)."

Here's the kind of quality commentary we're getting on this side of the pond:

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Sen. John McCain, ever the hawk, was in The New York Times insisting that Vladimir Putin — he of the soulful eyes, per former President George W. Bush — moved on Crimea (which Putin brazenly reclaimed for Russia on Tuesday) because of President Obama's "lack of resolve."

Perpetually cranky Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer used the Ukraine crisis to rage against Obama's refusal to join the civil war in Syria and supposed consignment of Iraq to "Iranian hegemony"(which was ignited by U.S. military action, and would be unresolved even if the U.S. occupied Mesopotamia indefinitely).

Obama certainly has seemed lost in the weeds when it comes to foreign policy. But the idea that his insufficiently bellicose attitude and eschewal of saber rattling has enabled some sort of 21st-century Anschluss by Russia is just partisan hot air.

"The fact that Putin has seized Crimea, a Russian-speaking zone of Ukraine, once part of Russia, where many of the citizens prefer to be part of Russia and where Russia has a major naval base, is not like taking Poland," writes Thomas L. Friedman, no peacenik, and widely traveled enough to actually know what he's talking about.

McCain openly calls for provocation, stepping up NATO exercises and military presence on Russia's eastern frontier. Krauthammer is grudgingly more sensible: "Whether anything Obama says and does would stop anyone remains questionable."

That would be a big ditto under a President McCain or Romney, by the way. For all their roaring, even the neocons know there is no military answer to Putin, short of a new Cold War. Which, now that I think of it, may be their fondest wish.

Interestingly, Krauthammer quotes Nixon-era Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in his Feb. 27 column. But Kissinger, that perpetual purveyor of realpolitik, penned his own Washington Post piece a few days later that was a serious slap down of America-centrism on Ukraine.

"The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. ... Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then," he wrote. He rejects the idea that Ukraine should join NATO.

But also: "Russia must accept that to try to force Ukraine into a satellite status, and thereby move Russia's borders again, would doom Moscow to repeat its history of self-fulfilling," Kissinger wrote, though he rejects the idea of Russian annexation of Crimea.

And: "Ukraine has been independent for only 23 years. ... The politics of post-independence Ukraine clearly demonstrates that the root of the problem lies in efforts by Ukrainian politicians to impose their will on recalcitrant parts of the country."

Bottom line? Most of us know nothing of Russia or Ukraine, much less Crimea, except what America-fixated pundits yell at us. Those who do share my friend's message: It's not about us.

When they stop trying to score points with the base, even those thundering and raging about the Russian gambit admit that the best the U.S. and Europe can do — and have begun to do — is exercise their enormous economic clout. Too bad we can't stop the political game playing — mid-term elections loom! — long enough to have a little humility.

My Swedish friend is no fan of Putin's. Even if it causes economic pain in both Europe and the United States, she says, "I do want very hard sanctions against Russia." But perhaps just as much, she would like those of us who know nothing of the politics of the region — that is, almost all of us — to stop thinking only of ourselves.

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